


The courage of stars

by Waywardgoose



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Female Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt Wanda Maximoff, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Wanda Maximoff Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-21
Updated: 2019-04-21
Packaged: 2020-01-23 12:53:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18550159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Waywardgoose/pseuds/Waywardgoose
Summary: Loosing Pietro wasn’t the first time Wanda Maximoff’s world cracked in two, but it was the first time she was alone (or so she thought)





	The courage of stars

You taught me the courage of stars before you left  
How light carries on endlessly, even after death - Sleeping at Last

 

* * *

  


When Costel is returned to her safe and sound but covered in blood nobody tells Zrinka what happened. It’s left to him- _her baby brother-_ to tell her. It’s left to an eight year old to inform her that Pietro Maximoff, the wide eyed boy who was her first kiss age seven, who used to pull her blonde pigtails at school and steal her pastries from the market is dead.

 

She sits numb for a while as she tries to fathom that there could be a world without his constant flirting and endless compassion. He gave his life for Costel. It was so reckless and noble and damn if that didn’t describe Pietro in every conceivable way, because of course he’d sacrifice himself without a second thought. He knows- _knew-_ how important Costel was to her. The only thing worse than a world without her childhood sweetheart is a world without her baby brother and-

 

Zrinka winces as she realises just what a world without Pietro means for Wanda.

Wanda is alone.

(Wanda is alone because she didn’t keep an eye on him. She let him run off. Now Pietro is dead-)

 

Zrinka refuses to let herself spiral into self pity. She’s too practical, too used to dragging herself off the ground over and over, so she marches Costel over to the first friendly face she recognises- Saskia from Miss Belgrade’s bakery- and goes to hunt down the Avenger who brought Costel back to her.

She forces her way through the crowd, pushes people aside till she finds them in a group speaking in hushed English. “Excuse me?” She says, then tries again in English. “Can you help me?”

 

“Yes?” The blonde Avenger replies. Zrinka is pretty sure it’s _Captain America_ himself as Costel had a trading card with him on once. She used it as a reference to do some rather unflattering graffiti on the wall.

“I’m looking for Wanda? Wanda Maximoff? I think you have her” He exchanges a glance with the Widow and who she recognises as the archer from before. “She’s seventeen? Brown hair, doesn't smile? Maybe this tall?” she gestures to just below her chin with her hand. They know damn well who she’s looking for and it irks Zrinka no small amount that they won’t just admit they know where she is.

“Are you her family?” The Black Widow asks.

 

Family felt like it was too big a word but if not family what were they?

Childhood friend’s from before the bombs fell, enemies fighting for beds in the orphanage and food on the streets, allies in an unjust war the previous generations had left them with.

(And maybe, in some future now forever closed, they could have been sisters in-law.)

 

“I am all she has left” She says finally, the truth of the words settle uncomfortably in her chest.

The archer nods sadly, gestures for him to follow her down the sterile looking corridors to the medical wing before finally stopping outside a private room. “She’s not...responding”

Zrinka looks through the window, sees the younger girl motionless on the bed- just how she used to with Pietro when the world got too tough. Wanda was staring at the ceiling as she waits for it to come crashing down on her again and it causes an aches deep inside to know that for all the years that pass and all the fighting, Wanda Maximoff is still a scared girl hiding under a bed waiting for the world to explode.

“I have seen this before” Zrinka tells him. “Do not fret, she is stronger than you know” It’s funny to think she should be comforting him when she was the one who loved the twins.

She steels herself, pushes aside her own grief at buries it in the back of her mind for later. If she left now, Wanda would never know she was here and neither of them would have to acknowledge what they’d lost.

The Maximoff twins never abandoned her though, so she ignores the crawling anxiety in her mind telling her to run, run from the shell of her childhood friend who came back from the experiments so much less and so much more. Zrinka holds her chin up and walks into the room, closes the door softly behind her. The cut out window in the door is a mirror inside and it’s a harsh reminder of how to the Avengers- Heroes to those who don’t have to fight for food and human rights- see Wanda as a Villain.

 

They were in a glorified cell. White walls and grey tiled floors, a hospital bed and nothing else. The red light of a camera blinked from a corner in the celling. Good. Let them watch them, let them see that she wasn’t a monster but a sweet girl who grew twisted without love and lost her way.

 

“Wanda” She calls out softly. “Baby it’s me”

Wanda doesn’t move, the rise and fall of her chest comes quickly but she doesn’t give a sign that she’d heard her. That in itself is a sign- Wanda had a history of playing possum when life got overwhelming- so Zrinka walks to the bed, sits beside her legs and grabs hold of her hand.

Wanda sits up slightly, green eyes watery with unshed tears when she looks at the older girl as though she’s inspecting her for injuries. Zrinka sees the moment Wanda realises what she’s wearing, recognises the blue summer dress Pietro had given her just a few nights ago. _‘If you keep stealing you’re going to get shot’_

She knows the second Wanda starts to blame it all on her careless words. The Maximoffs had always been superstitious to an extreme. Wanda said it was from their mother - ( _‘We’re Roma, it’s in our blood’_ ) whereas Pietro claimed it was from attending Hebrew school as children. In all the year’s Zrinka has known the twins, she’s never seen them step on a crack in the pavement or walk under a ladder even as the world crumbled to ash and brick dust around them.   

 

“Can we talk?” Zrinka says, desperate to save them both from spiralling. _Talking_. Wanda has never been good at that, Pietro was the social one, he made friends for them. He was the glue that held her and Zrinka’s fragile friendship together, their conversations rarely about anything over than Pietro.

Wanda lies back down and rolls onto her side unable to look at her friend anymore. It feels shameful how thankful she is that Wanda does this but her face is the mirror to Pietro’s and Zrinka isn’t sure how to look at it any longer without the grief welling up inside again. She’s not there for her own comfort, she’s there to save the girl under the bed.

“How’s Costel?” Wanda asks as if it really matters to her. Zrinka knows it does. Wanda has always been kind to them even as the world cut away at her soul every damn day. 

“He’ll be okay but how are _you_?”  

“I was jealous of you. That stupid dress” She confesses instead of answering.  Zrinka already knows that, tries to act as if she wasn’t laughing with the girls at the bakery over Wanda Maximoff’s pettiness just hours before. “He fancied you so much It felt like I was losing him when I needed him most and now”

“You're his world, Wanda. Don’t think for a minute he loves anyone as much as he loves you” they both catch the slip of the tongue, neither bother to correct it. Zrinka isn't sure it needs correcting, even death couldn't change Pietro’s devotion to his twin.

Her sobs are a wretched, mewling sound. Wanda was always so quiet and withdrawn by nature to hear such a raw emotion was almost animal. “I felt it. I _felt_ him die, Zee”

“Shh, Baby it’s okay” Zrinka leans forwards and runs her fingers through Wanda’s dark hair. It’s the same colour as Pietro’s was before they came back changed and a bleeding corner of her heart wishes to steal a lock so she’ll never forget him. “It’s okay, you’ll be okay. It hurts now, but someday, you’re going to learn how to live without him”

“I don’t want to” Wanda’s voice wobbles and Zrinka is taken back to a similar conversation they’d had after lights out in the first orphanage, the same words whispered under the bedsheets.

“I remember when a little Wanda Maximoff said that about her parents, and she was okay”

“Because I had him” Wanda sniffs. She sits up then, turns to look her in the eyes. Zrinka’s torn between thanking g-d for giving her Marya Maximoff’s green eyes and wishing she’d have her brother’s blue.

“You have _me”_ _  
_

“You’ve always been his”

“But didn’t you always share?” Zrinka learnt early on that to love one Maximoff was to love them both. They were a matching set. When she had, in a jealous teenage rage tried to pry Pietro away from his sister’s side he told her as much.

_‘We’re twins, Zee. We go together or not at all’_

“I know it hurts right now. So you do what you have to do, Baby, but you live because that’s what he would have wanted” Zrinka tells her.

“I _can’t_ ” 

“You can” she says a little too forcefully, trying to hold back her own tears. “Because you’re Wanda Maximoff, the same idiot who yells at police officers and rescues cats in air raids and signs up to freaky experiments because she thinks she could do good”

“I don’t...I think they want me to go with them. The Avengers, I mean. They said I can’t stay here”

“If you have to go you go. But you _call_. You write. I don’t care how but you keep in touch, okay?” Zrinka’s not sure who she’s asking for, it all feels like an attempt to absolve her guilt.

“Promise” It’s a lie and they both know it. The world is on fire, the future too uncertain. For all either of them know, Wanda’s going to be taken away by SHIELD and locked in a cell till the end of her days. Still part of her hopes that she’ll try make good on the lie.

 

Wanda sits up properly this time, pulls her legs underneath her and holds out her little ringed finger. For a moment they’re children again, sisters of circumstance being pushed from room to room by adults who doing care. They twine their pinkies and even if its broken, even if Wanda maximoff slips between her fingers it feels more real now. A _vow_ .  

“You don’t hate me?” Wanda asks as though that was ever in doubt. If the world makes any sense, Wanda should hate her for losing sight of Costel, For making her twin choose between his beloved sister and his hookups little brother.

“No baby, I got nothing but love for you” The surprise written on Wanda’s face is heartbreaking. Zrinka had always seen it as a certainty- The sky is blue, the grass is green, they would _always_ be friends.

Wanda leans in and buries her face in the older girls lap. With gentle hands Zrinka slowly works through the tangles in her long dark hair. “Please don’t go, not yet”  


She’d learnt years ago when they were all still safe and loved and in their parents arms that with Wanda you _always_ had two conversations at once. The words she’d say and the words she’d want to say. She was asking for company, yes, but she was really asking for time to stop.

 

Both girls can sense it was the end. What was left of their country in ruins. It feels like a cruel joke somehow- the only thing that could stop the bombs falling was the city of Novi Grad falling instead.

  
“I’ll stay with you as long as I can”

They don’t say anything else, just feel each others warmth the dull numb of a shared loss hangs between them till Wanda finally cries herself to sleep. With all the gentleness left in her, Zrinka lifts her head out her lap and tucks Wanda into the hospital bed. She kisses her brow, just how Pietro used to and tries not to linger on who would care for her now.

 

When she leaves the Archer- _Clint-_ is sat on the floor his back to the wall. He looks settled, as if he’s been waiting patiently. It’s a good act, but an act nevertheless. Maybe she wasn’t a spy, but she wasn’t stupid either. Zrinka knows the archer had been watching them through the one way mirror, knows that he’s heavy with guilt too. She's not sure if he speaks Sokovian, if he has any idea what was said between then. She doesn’t really care either.

 

“That girl is a hot head and an idiot and far too trusting for her own good” Zrinka says plainly, her english heavily accented. “But she is loyal and tries so hard and has so much _good_ inside of her. They wanted to help save Sokovia- maybe they got lost on the way but all the Maximoff’s ever wanted was to feel safe again”

 

She turns to peer through the glass at Wanda, tries to memorise her how she is in that moment- asleep and peaceful, unhaunted by life. If Zrinka never gets to see her again it’s how she want’s to remember her most.

 

“Look after her, Mister Avenger” Zrinka holds her chin high. “You owe that debt”

_We both do._


End file.
